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Promising T&T cricketer, 16, murdered

Sixteen-year-old Ackinton Walker, an avid cricketer, was selected to try out for T&T’s national under-16 team yesterday but instead his relatives spent the day at the Forensic Science Centre, St James, making funeral plans. Walker, who was called “Akie” by those who knew him, was shot just outside his Third Avenue, Barataria, home just after 8 pm on Sunday. He was pronounced dead on arrival at the Eric Williams Medical Science Complex. His autopsy report said he had been shot four times.

Speaking with the media at the centre, Walker’s stepfather Keith Prime said he took care of Walker even before he was born and viewed him as his son and not stepson. Prime said the bond between the two grew stronger when Walker’s mother passed away a few years ago. Walker and two of his friends were selected for trials for the national cricket team, he said. Walker, a Form Five student of the Barataria South Secondary was an all-rounder. “It was school, church and cricket. Ask anybody about him and they would say the same thing, everything in his life was cricket,” Prime said.

He said the last conversation they had was about the Windward Islands versus T&T match played at the Queen’s Park Oval on Sunday, adding that it was an understatement to say Walker loved cricket. Residents of Third Avenue heard gunshots just after 8 pm and called the police after they found Walker lying on the road. His cricket gear was scattered around him. North Eastern Division Task Force police took Walker to hospital. Police believe the killer or killers were after someone else and shot Walker to send a message. Walker’s aunts—Nicole and Kerry-Ann Walker — told the media their nephew was always thinking about cricket, even practising his strokes with an imaginary bat and would even bathe with his cricket bat.